800+ Million Hours Watched of Esports on Twitch

Twitch is the world’s leading video platform and community for gamers where above 45 million gamers come together to broadcast, watch and chat about video games. It has been stated in a report from Newzoo, Twitch users have watched approximately 803.7 million hours of eSports coverage since August 2015 till date.

Newzoo is the global leader in games, eSports and mobile intelligence. Basically, a company that studies the world of eSports. It was researched by Newzoo that the reason behind so many hours watched was that the audience was tuning in to Twitch for League of Legends and DOTA 2. The biggest month for eSports on Twitch was October 2015 with almost 124 million hours of viewership. October consisted of major events like the League of Legends championship, ESL One New York and MLG World Finals DOTA 2 tournaments. In the same month, eSports streaming was over 30 percent.

The second biggest month for eSports was August 2015 with around 110 million hours reported as viewed. The highlight on this month were also different tournaments namely the final of DOTA 2’s international, League of Legends’ regional leagues and the ESL Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament held in Cologne, Germany.

Events which made up for above half of the live streams that were being viewed was basically hosted by Riot Games and ESL with different eSports like League of Legends, Counter-Strike, DOTA 2 and Hearthstone. A prediction made by the analytical firm, Newzoo, was that by the end of 2016, above 1 billion people will be aware of eSports, expecting the number of viewers to grow.

The reports by Newzoo proves that the immense number of viewership on Twitch is mainly due to the two games; League of Legends and DOTA 2.